Cuts threaten solutions to rural doctor shortages

State and federal spending decisions pull dollars out of a frayed health system.

- BY BERNARD J. WOLFSON

ENLOE HEALTH runs the only hospital in Chico, Calif., and also owns an urgent care clinic in the town.

Olivia Owlett chose to do her primary care residency in this Northern California college town largely because it faces many of the same healthcare challenges she grew up with.

Owlett is one of four residents in the inaugural class of a three-year family medicine residency program run by the local nonprofit Healthy Rural California. She is the kind of doctor the organization seeks to draw to the far north of California, a region with severe physician shortages.

That's because Owlett knows in her gut what a lack of healthcare means, having seen family members drive hours to see a specialist or simply forgo care in her hometown of Wellsboro, a hamlet in Pennsylvania. She did rural training at medical school in Colorado. And because her husband attended Chico State, the couple have a strong social network here, making them likely to remain.

"With the growing family medicine residency program here, it's a great opportunity to bring more doctors into the area, and I'd love to be a part of that," Owlett said.

Owlett exemplifies what leaders in rural Northern California want more of: doctors trained locally who stay to work in the area. They have ambitious plans to attract more Owletts and expand the medical workforce, but recent state and federal spending cuts will pull dollars out of an already frayed health system, exacerbating the shortage of care and making their efforts more challenging.

"We need help up here, and cutting funding is not going to help us," said Debra Lupeika, associate dean for rural and community-based education at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine and a family physician at the tribal Rolling Hills Clinic in Red Bluff, about 40 miles northwest of Chico. "We are in dire straits. We need doctors."